Sarasota

Shipt, an online grocery delivering company, is expanding its services in Sarasota to include Costco Wholesale.

The company, which entered Sarasota with its Publix service in October 2015, now serves more than 20 million households in 40 markets throughout the country. Shipt connects members with its professional shoppers, who hand pick their items and deliver them as soon as an hour after the order is placed. The service offers unlimited grocery deliveries to members for $99 per year.

The company this month also is expanding its delivery options in Tallahassee, Gainesville, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Orlando, Fort Myers and Naples.

Westfield Sarasota Square will host the Easter Bunny from March 31 to April 15 in the mall’s Column Court located between H&M and A’GACI. Professional photographers will be available so that children and families can have their pictures taken with the bunny. Pricing information is available online at westfield.com/Sarasota.

Individuals and families with pets have two chances to have their animal’s photo professionally taken with the Easter Bunny. The mall will welcome leashed, well-behaved pets from 6-8 p.m. on April 5 and 12.

Sarasota’s first California Pizza Kitchen is slated to open by the end of the month and the chain is hiring for all positions, including servers, hosts, bartenders, takeout, bussers, line cooks and dishwashers at the company’s first Sarasota location.

The new location at The District at University Town Center near the Mall at University Town Center will feature artisan pizzas, creative main plates, hand-crafted cocktails. The restaurant promises meals will be prepared fresh from scratch with high-quality, unique and seasonal ingredients. The opening of CPK Sarasota marks the restaurant’s 16th location in the state.

The company offers flexible schedules, employee meal discounts, healthcare plan options, full-time annual incentive bonuses and immense opportunities for growth, all in an environment where employees are encouraged to express their unique talents and skills.

With all the retail growth we’ve seen in Southwest Florida, it’s hard to believe the region is still hungry for more.

Until you realize the big retail story of 2016 was grocery stores.

There have been rumors about Sprouts Farmers Market, Lucky’s Market and Earth Fare moving into the Sarasota-Bradenton region since well before I took over this column in August 2015.

We’ve finally seen some more concrete movement from these boutique grocers that all have strong reputations for locally sourced, organic foods — specifically Sprouts.

If you haven’t been down to Pelican Plaza at U.S. 41 and Beneva Road lately, the north strip mall there has gotten a complete overhaul. What used to be a flat, blank wall between Petco and Total Wine & More has been transformed into a sleek-looking storefront. Sprouts planted “Coming Soon” signs outside the site toward the end of the summer. The grocer hasn’t given us a prospective opening date yet, but the Phoenix, Arizona-based chain has openings listed on its website through March 1. It’s safe to assume it’ll be sometime after that.

Meanwhile, Asheville, North Carolina-based Earth Fare, is eyeing a site on the north end of Lakewood Ranch in a new development on State Road 70, according to commercial building permits filed in Manatee County.

Lucky’s Market, too, is planning a 2017 opening. The chain’s first Sarasota store is slated for the empty Dillard’s anchor at Westfield Southgate. Rumors about the organic grocer moving into Southgate first surfaced this fall and I was able to confirm it just last week.

Whole Foods Market also is moving forward with its second Sarasota store. The project at Honore Avenue and University Parkway met opposition from environmental group ManaSota-88 and a lawsuit was filed and then dropped in August. Now, the grocer has plans to open in late fall or early winter 2017.

With all that’s on the retail world’s plate, it’s hard to believe that our market has room for anything else.

But this region has quite the appetite.

Manatee County-based Benderson Development Co. is expected to break ground on its East District at University Town Center. Renderings released earlier this year portray the project as a hot spot for residential, retail, restaurants and entertainment. iPic, a luxury movie theater, also is expected to call the site home.

The East District is expected to rival the Westfield Southgate revitalization, which welcomed its own luxury theater, CineBistro, this year.

The high-end, indoor shopping center has struggled to maintain tenants and foot traffic since the Mall at University Town Center opened in 2014, but it’s got big plans for 2017. Westfield has four restaurants under construction, and one of them is a first-time concept from Bravo Brio Restaurant Group, the parent company of Brio Tuscan Grille. Connors Steak and Seafood and Naples Flatbread and Wine Bar also have signed on for a spot at the mall.

We’re still waiting on details about the fourth restaurant player.

LA Fitness has called dibs on at least a portion of the vacant Dillard’s anchor and is expected to open sometime this spring.

Just south of Westfield Southgate, Benderson’s Siesta Promenade project is steadily rising from its recession-driven grave. The hotel and retail mash-up came back to life this year after residents in the nearby Pine Shores neighborhood protested the project in 2014. This time, Siesta Promenade features a residential component, a hotel and a scaled-back retail component. Benderson officials are still working with the county to hash out density, and residents have packed meetings all year with fears of increased traffic. That project is expected to break ground sometime in the spring.

As expected in this increasingly digital market, the retail world took some major blows during 2016. Despite the growth that Southwest Florida has seen, retail in general has struggled.

Sports Authority closed stores nationwide, leaving us with prominent gaps in Pelican Plaza, University Town Center and Centergate Village on Bee Ridge Road.

Macy’s plans to close 100 stores nationwide this year, but it’s unclear if one of this region’s four locations will be on the chopping block. Right now, the department store giant has stores at Westfield Southgate, Westfield Sarasota Square, the Mall at University Town Center and the Port Charlotte Town Center. Losing an anchor would be a major blow to any of those shopping centers.

Retailers have to be able to do things that the internet cannot or we’re going to see more losses. That’s why we’re seeing players like LA Fitness and CineBistro move into our blank spaces.

You don’t have to leave your home to get what you need anymore. So retailers and developers have to figure out ways to draw us out.

That’s a concept and an evolution that kept me very busy last year.

I have to imagine that we’ve only seen a fraction of what’s in store for 2017.

New York Jewelers has left Westfield Sarasota Square for the Mall at University Town Center.

A business permit filed with Sarasota County indicates that New York Jewelers, which operated out of the south Sarasota County mall until earlier this year, is moving to Southwest Florida’s newest indoor shopping hub. The jeweler is the latest in a long string of retailers, including Banana Republic, Gap, American Eagle, Saks Fifth Avenue and William Sonoma, to leave one of Sarasota’s two Westfield properties for the 2-year-old mall near the intersection of Interstate 75 and University Parkway.

The retailer will sell precious stones, silver, gold and platinum bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings, pendants and watches, according to the permit.

Officials with the Mall at University Town Center and New York Jewelers could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear when the store would open at the mall, but signs for the jewelry company have been installed at the empty former Edward Beiner eyeglass store on the second floor of the mall, between Ann Taylor Loft and Capital Teas.

Edward Beiner closed its store at the $315 million mall last winter, one of seven retailers that have closed there it opened in October 2014. The Florida-based eyewear company’s parent company, Coco Lunette Holding LLC, is in the middle of a lawsuit with TB Mall at UTC LLC, an affiliate of the mall’s parent company, Taubman Centers Inc.

Court documents filed in May show that Taubman is seeking damages in excess of $15,000 as well as a judgment for all future rent due as well as compensatory, incidental, late fees and other expenses.

A letter included in the documents shows that Coco Lunette owed more than $63,800 as of mid-March. The company had a 10-year lease with the mall.

L’Core Paris, a beauty company known for infusing creams with gemstone and gold particles, is slated to join Westfield Southgate in 2017.

The high-end skincare company, based in Paris, has locations in New York, New Jersey, California, Hawaii and Las Vegas, but the new store at Westfield Southgate will be L’Core’s first move into Florida, according to the retailer’s website.

L’Core will be on the south end of the mall near the entrance to CineBistro and Macy’s, according to Christa Kremer, the marketing director for Southgate and its sister mall Westfield Sarasota Square. The company is anticipating a late spring opening, Kremer said.

L’Core’s skin care lines range from the low hundreds and into the thousands based on the collection. A set of 12 24K gold facial and neck masks retails at $10,000 and just less than an ounce of pearl brightening serum is priced at $450. The retailer also uses sapphires, diamonds, emeralds and rubies in their products.

The past two years have been a period of rebuilding for Westfield Southgate, which has struggled since the Mall at University Town Center opened in October 2014.

The skincare company is among a number of storefronts expected to join the mall in 2017.

Connors Steak & Seafood, BRAVO! Cucina Italiana, Naples Flatbread and Wine Bar and a fourth unnamed restaurant are currently under construction in the northwest corner of the shopping center. An LA Fitness and as many as two other retailers are slated to move into the vacant Dillard’s anchor.

Mall officials expect to make more new arrival announcements in the coming months, Kremer said.

Wood-Ellison had been laid off three times from marketing jobs, and her skills just weren’t in great demand in the Sarasota area.

So she decided she needed to create a job rather than look for one.

She started The Artful Canine in 2009 with an idea and a sewing machine in her spare bedroom and has since grown it into a small manufacturing business producing dog collars, leashes and accessories. Today she and her four employees sew 50 to 60 products a day in their workshop in Venice, then sell them directly to customers through Amazon.com and Wood-Ellison’s own online shop.

“I started my own website because I was an online marketer, so I knew how to do my own website,” she said. “I knew how to market it and advertise it.”

There are a number of manufactures in the Sarasota region, said Kevin Cooper, president and CEO of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. The area has a few big, well-known company names, like Tervis and PGT, that manufacture here, but many smaller operations are thriving in anonymous industrial parks in the area, too. If there’s a gap, it’s the mid-sized companies, he said. But Southwest Florida has the resources for these companies to be successful.

“I think it’s more common than some people would think,” Cooper said.

Technology has given entrepreneurs like Wood-Ellison a way to take their products directly to consumers in national and even global markets.

The beginning

Wood-Ellison began by designing fashionable and highly functional collars. Martingale collars that tighten if a dog pulls during a walk are useful for dogs that can slip their heads out of traditional collars, but six years ago it was tough to find a stylish one, she said. So she began splashing them with patterns, colors and holiday themes, and the company grew steadily.

She also advertised for people who knew how to sew, which is a difficult skill to find today, she said.

“It’s not complicated, but there is an art to it,” Wood-Ellison said. “I call them collar crafters because there is a certain art to handling the material.”

Her first hire was Cynthia Ginkinger, a North Port resident who needed a job that worked around her son’s schedule. Ginkinger had started sewing years before as a hobbyist, and she made things like children’s Halloween costumes and curtains in her spare time. She’d never sewn professionally but had the basic skills she needed.

The operation was small enough that Ginkinger could pick up a batch of collar materials, sew them at home and return the finished product. But that didn’t last long.

Wood-Ellison refinished and air conditioned her garage in 2010 so they could work there. The duo outgrew that space quickly and moved into a small Port Charlotte retail space with a large back room they used as a workshop. As she added more people, machines and designs, the business needed another new home and it moved into an industrial space in Venice.

Now Wood-Ellison and her four employees have the industrial building well stocked with racks and boxes of the nylon base, narrow decorative fabrics and small metal pieces used to make the collars.

The company has changed dramatically since those first few home-stitched collars that Ginkinger made for The Artful Canine.

“I love watching this evolve and I love being a part of it,” Ginkinger said. “I’m evolving with her. I’m still hanging on and going with her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything grow that fast.”

Made in Venice

The collars are manufactured in Venice, but some of their pieces are produced overseas. The plaid fabrics, for example, come from the United Kingdom. The metal fasteners come from Asia.

There are five steps between when Wood-Ellison receives the materials and when a customer finally gets one of her products in the mail. Her employees cut and pair the fabric with the nylon before the two are attached with an industrial sewing machine. Then those pieces are grouped with fasteners and sent to a tacking machine that secures the hardware.

The company manufactured about 20,000 products on a 1960s Singer tacking machine until Wood-Ellison finally upgraded this July.

The Artful Canine ended its first year with a minute $5,000 in sales. That number grew 400 percent in 2010 and then by about 100 percent a year in the years that followed. Growth slowed to 12 to 15 percent last year after the move to the new Venice workshop. The company’s new space at 752 Commerce Dr., Suite 11, in Venice, has plenty of room for expansion, and The Artful Canine could feasibly quadruple its output there.

A piece of a big industry

Jeremy Ellison, Wood-Ellison’s son, expects the growth to continue. He runs the tacking machine for the company, and he believes his mom has found a strong niche in the canine product’s industry. Even when people are cutting corners elsewhere, they will still pamper their pets.

Americans spend billions of dollars on their pets every year, and the total has more than tripled in the past two decades, according to the American Pet Products Association. The industry is expected to reach a record $62.75 billion this year, which is up from $60.28 billion in 2015.

“They’re like children and actually sometimes people like their pets more than they like their children,” Ellison said. “It’s a smaller, cuter, fuzzier and less difficult.”

Wood-Ellison already has plans to move into the Canadian and United Kingdom markets through Amazon.com, and, eventually, she’d like to sell them wholesale to retailers. She’s avoided that up to this point because she knows the wholesale market would more than double the cost of her final product to consumers.

Today, the collars sell for $13 to $22, based on size and design. She won’t wholesale to retailers, she said, until she can get the overall cost of her materials down.

“That continues to happen each year,” Wood-Ellison said. “Each year we find ourselves with more buying power, so we can eliminate distributors and work directly with the manufacturers.”

And that’s the kind of hands-on, personal approach that has propelled the business thus far. Wood-Ellison, typically, works six days a week. She does all her own books, designs her own new collars and even runs the sewing machine regularly.

It’s a different life than the marketing career that brought her here, but it’s a welcome one.

“It took that struggle and that recession for me to see it,” Wood-Ellison said. “I’ve often said I wish that this had happened to me 30 years ago because I probably would have done it 30 years ago. I just never thought of that, and I like it. I like it.”

The National Retail Federation is estimating that 108.5 million Americans shopped online over the long weekend, which toppled the 99.1 million who braved the brick-and-mortar stores.

The online offers started coming early last week, but the email bombardment truly hit Wednesday and continued into Cyber Monday. Online consumers were pelted with buy-one-get-one messages, coupons, promotional codes, discounts, free shipping and absurd savings.

I got more Thanksgiving greetings from Ulta, Amazon.com, Macy’s and Target, among others, than I did from my own family.

Even so, overall spending was down, with the average consumer paying out $289.19 compared with $299.60 last year, according to a survey from the federation.

It was a dynamic weekend for retailers, but an even better weekend for consumers. More than a third of shoppers reported that 100 percent of their purchases were on sale, and that likely took a bite out of overall totals.

While we couldn’t see that firsthand for online shoppers, we certainly saw shoppers braving the crowds at brick-and-mortar stores for deals.

It started with the doorbuster-style hordes on Thanksgiving night. Target, Macy’s, JCPenney, Best Buy and Kohl’s all had impressive crowds waiting for their holiday shopping kickoffs.

The line at Target on University Parkway had more than 250 people a half hour before the store opened at 6 p.m. That line snaked all the way around the Chipotle and to GameStop, and it likely grew even more in the minutes leading up to the opening. Down the street at Kohl’s, the crowd stretched nearly out to University Parkway.

The chaos tapered as Thanksgiving turned into Black Friday itself.

The survey found that about 29 percent of shoppers headed out after 10 a.m. on Black Friday, up from 24 percent last year. Fewer than 15 percent of consumers arrived at the stores by 6 a.m. or earlier on Black Friday.

Most stores in Southwest Florida were fairly manageable in the early hours of what’s traditionally been called the biggest shopping holiday of the year.

Until they weren’t.

Old Navy and Best Buy at University Parkway were swamped by mid-afternoon. One customer told me she actually ordered her items online from inside the store. It was easier to wait a couple days for an iPad or a new dress than wait in those lines. Plus both retailers were offering online promotions with free shipping, so I’m sure she wasn’t the only shopper who took that route.

If parking in that shopping center was a chore (which is was), it was nothing compared to the Mall at University Town Center. The two-year-old mall’s lot was full by 3 p.m. and cars had started spilling into the grassy area on the south end between Dillard’s and Nathan Benderson Park.

The crowds tamed slightly into Saturday, but most parking lots and storefronts were bustling. The exception being Westfield Southgate, which has struggled following the opening of the UTC. The mall, which is in the middle of construction, was a ghost town in the early afternoon, and employees at that Macy’s, specifically, looked bored.

I looped up Tamiami Trail into downtown Sarasota, and took a lap around the Burns Court area. Even most of the boutiques there had hearty crowds for Small Business Saturday. On a couple occasions, I even had to wait a few minutes for a dressing room, which is a rarity at a lot of Southwest Florida’s smaller businesses.

People were out, and people were spending.

And they’re not done yet.

That National Retail Federation survey also shows only 9 percent of consumers have finished up their holiday shopping.

I’m not one of them, and odds are that you aren’t either.

I’ve got a few more stops to make and more emails to open before I can cross everyone off my holiday list.

My credit card and I are both tired. And that’s OK. There’s no need to panic yet.

But small-business owners are counting on you and your cash this time of year, too.

Wedged in between the long lines and doorbusters on Thanksgiving Day and the digital shopping carts on Cyber Monday is Small Business Saturday and the Shop Small movement.

We’ve all heard the adage that good things come in small packages.

Often, that can be said of retailers, too.

American Express launched the shopping holiday in 2010 as a way to give small businesses a larger voice among the booming commercial holiday ads. Locally owned stores often can’t compete with the mass messages and advertisements that the big-box stores bombard consumers with this time of year. The American Express campaign brings all the little guys together in one, loud, unified campaign.

Sharing the market with the big-box stores is a challenge, but it’s a fun one, said Molly Jackson, who owns Molly’s! A Chic and Unique Boutique on Stickney Point Road just west of U.S. 41. The Shop Small message is one that she wishes consumers heard 365 days a year, but she’ll take what she can get. A single Saturday dedicated to small businesses is better than no spotlight at all.

There’s a level experience and customer service that small businesses can offer that larger retailers often overlook, said Nicole DeMoss, who owns Spider Lily Finery on Siesta Drive across the street from Westfield Southgate. Her shop sells a wide variety of handmade clothing, jewelry and gifts, and she can tell you the background of nearly everything in her store, whether it’s a hand-painted bracelet, a greeting card or a bar of soap. She knows how it’s made and she typically knows the individual artisan you’re supporting.

Jackson also can pay attention to details that a larger retailer might miss. She keeps a database of her customers that tracks what they’ve bought in the past. That data can tell her their size and the styles and even what colors they lean toward. Her staff also keeps a running list of things her shoppers ask for.

Jackson always has specific customers in mind when she goes to market, and little touches like that help set Molly’s! apart from the retail giants. It’s why she went after fox- and mermaid-themed gifts on her last buying trip. Customers asked for them, so she got them.

These little guys aren’t going to offer you a doorbuster-style deal on a television or computer, but their doors will be open and they’ll be waiting for you with the personal touches only they can provide.

And that’s the difference between these mom-and-pop shops and the majority of the chains whose ads you’ll see on television this holiday season.

It’s less about big sales, big promotions and big credit card bills.

It’s more about putting a little more heart into your holiday shopping.

The holiday shopping rush — to the dismay of retail-working family members and Thanksgiving traditionalists — has taken a huge bite out of the ceremonial turkey dinner. As much as holiday conservatives have fought it, seasonal shopping begins before most families take the bird out of the oven.

To secure the bulk of doorbuster deals, you just have to take a slice of pumpkin pie to go.

The days of long lines that wrap around retail stores on Black Friday itself are predominantly over. Best Buy had one last year when it opened with a second set of doorbuster deals at 8 a.m the day after Thanksgiving, but the first wave for the electronics retail giant had come at 5 p.m. on the holiday. They’ve got the same plan this year, too.

Small clusters of shoppers gathered outside places like Westfield Sarasota Square and Staples for the crack of dawn Black Friday openings last year. There were and still are several players who keep their doors shut on the holiday. The plan worked well for employees and any shopper itching for those retailers’ first-in promotions, but the stores missed out on the kickoff hype. The competition in the wee hours was minimal because the crowds just weren’t there. This year Sarasota Square has switched back to a Thanksgiving Day opening.

Even though the crowds picked up midway through the afternoon on Friday, you’ve convinced me, Southwest Florida, that Black Friday in its traditional sense is dead.

And so I, like the bulk of the retail world, also will be working on Thanksgiving.

I’m going to start making my rounds around lunchtime, and I expect the most dedicated shoppers will have camped out well before then.

JCPenney is kicking off the openings this year at 3 p.m. and is offering coupons for the first people in the door, valued from $10 to $500. Those $500 coupons and the early opening could be enough for the department store to build on some of the momentum it’s recently had in the retail market. A lot of retailers have been hurting this year, but it’s been less so for JCPenney. In theory, a shopper could try for one of those $500 coupons and still nab a decent spot in line for a store with a 6 p.m. opening.

Best Buy, Macy’s and Toys “R” Us are all fighting for the 5 p.m. crowd.

Ellenton Premium Outlets, the Mall at University Town Center, Westfield Sarasota Square, Kohl’s, Target, Walmart and Bealls will all start their sales at 6 p.m.

While the chaos and the lines will likely be reserved for Thursday night, there are a number of retailers that are bucking the trend.